Her only thoughts were of the little girl. Did the cessation of gunfire mean she had been captured? Or, worse, killed? Had she somehow eluded her pursuit and escaped back out into the night? Why had she even come back here and how had she done so without being seen? Was she hurt down here and in desperate need of help? Sturm knew there was no hope of salvation for the child. She had killed people and for that there could be no absolution, but she couldn’t forget how she had felt when the girl had crawled into her lap and clung to her like any other frightened child would. The girl was lost and alone, half the planet away from her home, and could probably understand her surroundings no better than they could understand her. She was an animal who could nearly pass for human, a savage who could read and write a primitive language that had confounded scholars for years, and a stone-cold murderer with the emotional frailty of any child her age. On one hand, Sturm wanted to do whatever she had to do to save her, but on the other, she knew Porter was right. There was no place for the girl in the world they lived in, no chance of assimilating her into civilized society, no hope of saving her from the men who wanted to exploit her…shy of death.
The bottom line was that Sturm didn’t know what to do with the girl. All she knew was that right now she needed to find her. Let the chips fall where they may from there.
Dust turned the tears on her cheeks into mud. Her teeth were gritty, her tongue and throat parched. Her phone continued to vibrate in her pocket. She had silenced the ringer after deciding to follow the men underground, knowing full well that Porter would call incessantly. He probably would have been able to talk her out of making such a rash decision if given the opportunity, which was why she hadn’t waited for him. Instead, she’d walked around to the access point farthest from where the men had entered in such a hurry and worked her way back toward them, hoping they would drive the child ahead of them and she would be able to snatch her up and extract her from the ruins before anyone even guessed that she was there. But so far, she hadn’t heard so much as the patter of bare feet or any sound at all other than her haggard breathing and occasional curses when she tripped over the dislodged debris that hadn’t been there before. Her plan was foolish and she knew it. Not only could she stumble blindly into the line of fire of a man with night vision goggles, an assault weapon, and a quick trigger finger, but she could encounter the girl, who she might have caught in a moment of weakness earlier and would now view her as a threat. She was willing to take that chance, though. Had the girl truly wanted to kill her, she’d had two perfect opportunities already, and hadn’t taken advantage of either. It was hard to believe she was capable of killing all of the others. For whatever reason, she’d allowed Sturm to see her vulnerability. Maybe it was only because Sturm had found her half-asleep the first time, or perhaps there was a better reason. But after killing so many men…
She stopped dead in her tracks.
“Men,” she whispered aloud.
The girl had gone after Porter the moment she saw him, and yet when Sturm had stepped between them, the child had given up the fight and allowed herself to be whisked from the gas in Sturm’s arms. Was it possible that there was something about men specifically that triggered her aggression? Did they remind her in some way of the reason she was now in this desperate situation? If that was the case, then maybe Sturm could get her out of here safely after all.
She was about to start walking again when she heard a clicking noise from somewhere ahead and to her right. At first, she thought it might be the rubble preparing to shift again and braced herself for another debris storm, but then it faded. A few moments later it repeated, then stopped again.
Sturm inched forward, following the sound through the warrens. Each time it ceased, she paused and waited for it to begin again before pressing on.
The intermittent sound grew louder and louder until it sounded like she was right on top of it. She crawled through a collapsed section of a brick wall and remained on her hands and knees, listening. It was right in front of her now. It wasn’t so much a clicking noise, but rather the sound of something wet and sticky being repeatedly peeled from whatever it was stuck to, and between occurrences, another much softer sucking sound. She crawled closer and smelled the coppery scent of—
Light flooded across the chamber from behind her, casting her shadow ahead of her onto the paving stones and the supine form of a man dressed entirely in black. The pale shape crouched over him, its face buried in the man’s neck, slurping from a ragged wound and then slapping its lips contentedly. It looked up in surprise and the light reflected from a pair of pink eyes. Blood glistened on the girl’s face and torso. She was positively drenched with it. She bared her teeth and snapped at the beam of light, then, in one fluid movement, leapt to her feet and darted into the shadows, using her hands to propel her like a jungle cat.
“Wait!” Sturm called after her, but she knew it was already too late. She whirled to face Porter, who just stood there holding his flashlight, his face ashen, staring at the point where the girl had been only a moment prior. His light reflected from a wide crimson puddle on the ground. Sturm stood up and rounded on him. “What do you think you’re doing? She wasn’t frightened until you stormed in here. I was just about to—”
“About to what? Did you see what she was doing? She was drinking his blood right out of his goddamn neck!”
“And now she’s gone and we don’t have a chance in hell of finding her?”
“Finding her? Can you hear yourself, Layne? Look around…” He shined his beam from one side of the corridor to the other. There had to be at least half a dozen bodies sprawled on the floor. All of them wore the same black utilities and boots. Their faces were turned to one side, their necks twisted away from their bodies to expose the massive gouges in their throats. “She killed all of these men. We walked in on her sucking the blood right out of them. What part of this are you not getting?”
“She’s just a little girl, for God’s sake. You saw what she wrote. She’s scared and alone and far away from home. Her mother was killed and people with guns keep coming in here after her. How do you think she’s going to react?”
“By nearly tearing their heads off with her teeth? Of course. That’s how any normal child would react.”
“When faced with the men who killed her mother? Presumably before her very eyes? What would you expect her to do?”
“Not practically decapitate and exsanguinate them for starters!” Porter took a deep breath, blew it out slowly, and resumed in a more rational tone. “She can’t stay down here, Layne. You know that as well as I do. They’re going to keep sending men in here after her until they either get her or cut their losses and just firebomb the place. If you have some brilliant idea of how to deal with her, I’m all ears. Otherwise…otherwise we have no choice but to neutralize the threat. Can you see any other alternative?”
She turned away and stared off into the darkness. He pointed his light at her to gauge her reaction. Her shadow wavered on the exposed timber and wiring in the wall. She watched it nod from the corner of her eye as though it belonged to someone else entirely.
His hand closed over hers and he drew her into an embrace. She shuddered against him, then hurriedly wiped the tears from her eyes before he could see them. She was so tired that whatever control she had once had over her emotions was long gone.
“Whatever she may be,” Sturm whispered, “she’s still just a child.”
Porter nodded, but said nothing. His brow furrowed and he glanced up into the rubble. He craned his neck and listened for a long moment.
“Time to go,” he whispered.
“Wha—?”
And then she heard it. A distant rumble of engines. The ground trembled almost imperceptibly. Dust cascaded down on their heads.
“Get moving,” he whispered, and pushed her ahead of him.
They were running when they heard the muffled bang of a car door closing outside the ruins.
THIRTY-FIVE
Seatt
le, Washington
4:28 a.m. PST
Spears drifted in and out of consciousness, from one black realm to another. His mouth and sinuses were full of blood and his lungs made a rattling sound when he breathed. Even the slightest movement speared him with a sharp pain from the broken rib that prodded his insides. Pins and needles assaulted his hands and feet. He’d barely been able to activate his emergency beacon, or maybe he’d just dreamed that he had. It was so hard to tell the difference anymore. The darkness grew colder with each passing second, or was it a consequence of losing so much blood? At one point, he was certain he heard the soft patter of footsteps, but it could just as easily have been the irregular tapping of his pulse in his ears. All of his men were dead. That was the one certainty. And if the men he had left at the compound on standby didn’t retrieve him soon, he would be too, whether the creature returned to finish him off or not. The weight of the rubble was slowly compressing him to the floor, making it harder and harder to steal even a whiff of the dust-riddled air. If the broken rub shifted and punctured a lung, even that futile effort would be beyond his physical capabilities.
His blood stung his eyes, but he blinked them clear, if only for a few seconds at a time. He heard indistinct noises, somewhere far away, but they subsided and again gave way to the silence of the grave. He tried to claw his way out from beneath the rubble, blood streaming down his face from the laceration across his hairline and dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Grabbing any handhold he could find, he pulled himself through the slick puddle of his own blood. His arms trembled, but at least the feeling had returned to his fingers, even if he only felt pain. By the time he pried his legs out from under the debris, he could already hear the sound of footsteps echoing down the corridor from somewhere ahead, disembodied sounds that seemed to originate from everywhere and nowhere at once. With a roar of agony, he freed himself, crawled through the gap in the brick wall, and fell onto his side in the hallway crisscrossed with wood and iron beams.
He could smell the blood of his men all around him, and, beneath it, the faint residue of wasted gunpowder.
The footsteps grew louder and he pinpointed the source. His men were closing in on him from the north. The hell if he was going to allow them to find him like this. It took superhuman effort, but he managed to rise to his feet, where he swayed, gripping his broken rib, until he found his equilibrium. When his men finally arrived, the anger on his face masked the pain and he staggered toward their indistinct silhouettes and the clomping sound of their boots. With their night vision goggles, he knew they could see him just fine, while he was at a distinct disadvantage. He gritted his teeth, lowered his hand from his ribs, and stood defiantly before them.
“Are you all right, sir?” one of the men asked. Spears didn’t immediately recognize the man’s voice, but it didn’t matter.
“I need a pair of goggles.” There was a clattering sound as the man picked up something from the ground. The cold metal was damp and sticky when he pressed it into Spears’s hands. “Preferably a pair not covered with Morgan’s blood, if you wouldn’t mind.”
The man swapped the pair in his hand from those on his face and passed them to Spears, who seated them over his eyes. After so long in complete darkness, even the odd blue and black contrast was a godsend. He looked at the soldier before him and watched the expression of revulsion crinkle his face when a ribbon of blood trickled down his cheek from under the lenses. Spears recognized him as Darby Keenan, a section leader in Phobos’s Search and Detection Division. Had he really burned through so many of his best men that he was this far down the organizational chart? Behind him stood two more men, their backs to him as they covered the corridor down the sights of their IARs. A fourth man knelt on the floor beside an open tackle box. He rummaged around until he found what he was looking for and rose to his feet. He couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall. When Spears saw the field dressings in the man’s small hands, he realized that it wasn’t a man at all. Kate Newland was a trained medic and long-range rifle shooting champion. He had hired her away from the Marines for both specialties. He liked the idea of a sniper who could pluck off enemies from a distance and then sneak in and tend to any members of his advance team if they fell. Right now, though, he didn’t require any of her skills. He swatted her hands away when she reached for his face with a roll of gauze and cringed at the resultant pain in his side.
“You’re going to need to get that rib taken care of,” she said, and turned away without another word. She retrieved her case and loaded it into her backpack.
“What happened down here?” Keenan asked. He was staring at a wall spattered with long arcs of blood that looked like they could have been sprayed there by a garden hose. He nodded to himself as though confirming an inner theory he hadn’t shared out loud. “What are you orders, sir?”
“Collect the remains, load them up in the cars, and get them the hell out of here.” Spears paused. “How long do we have before sunrise?”
“Roughly an hour, sir.”
Spears looked at Newland. Despite her diminutive size, she projected an aura of quiet strength. The way she held her rifle. Her slender arms and legs, corded with muscle like high-tension cables strung under her smooth skin. She was every bit as intimidating as any of his men. Yes, she was definitely an impressive physical specimen. He thought about her body under those fatigues and imagined exactly what he wanted to do to it.
A smile played at the corners of his lips.
“Sir?” Keenan said.
Spears realized the man had been talking and was waiting for a response. He spit a gob of clotted blood onto the ground and turned away from Newland.
“Keenan. You and the other men are in charge of retrieving the bodies. How many did you pass on your way in here?”
“I didn’t stop to count, sir.”
“But there were plenty of them, weren’t there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you’d better get on it, soldier.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Keenan spun on his heel and ushered his men off in the direction from which they had come.
“Newland,” Spears called. She had fallen into step behind the others, but stopped when she heard her name. He closed the distance between them and tried not to study her body too overtly. “One of my men might still be alive. I could see him through the hole in the wall over there when the ceiling collapsed on me. The creature attacked him, but I thought I saw him make a break for one of the tunnels over there in that room.”
She glanced at the blood-streaked wall, then back at him.
“Leave no man behind,” Spears said. “If there’s a chance he survived, we can’t just abandon him.”
“Which man was it, sir?”
She made no effort to hide the note of incredulity in her voice.
“I couldn’t tell. The whole goddamn ceiling had just fallen down on my head, in case you didn’t notice.” He smeared the blood from his temple with the back of his wrist for effect. “If you aren’t coming, then fine. Give me your kit and I’ll go by myself. Just don’t bother showing up for your final check unless you want it shoved straight down your throat.”
He reached for her pack, but she grabbed his hand before he even got close.
“What about that thing you came down here to hunt?”
“If you see it, drill it through the eye.”
She smirked and turned away from him. He followed her through the nearly collapsed doorway into the room he had been in before. The orifice at the back led to the broken branch that would deposit them in the bootlegger’s tunnel. She looked him up and down, removed her backpack, and looped one of the shoulder straps around her ankle. Leading with her rifle, she crawled into the dark tube. Spears scurried in behind her and tried to stay right on her heels. As she was so much smaller, she moved through the narrow chute with admirable speed and agility. Had he been thinking rationally, he would have brought her down here from the start. Perhaps they would have even ac
complished their mission by now.
At the end of the tunnel, she tucked her head, rolled down the heap of broken bricks, and alighted on her feet. She waited from him to tumble down and stood over him with an amused expression on her face. The pain from his broken rib must have been obvious. She hardly had to duck to stand erect in the tunnel.
“So what’s it going to be?” She still wore the smirk on her face as she stared down at him through the aperture. “You and I both know damn well whoever lost all that blood didn’t go running off in this direction. Don’t think you’re the first to run this game on me.”
Spears attempted to stand, but she braced her boot on his shoulder and shoved him back down.
“You obviously have the wrong idea,” he said.
“Do I?” She grabbed him by the collar and jerked him to his knees. He looked up into her face, and then at her right hand as it slowly lowered the zipper on her jacket. She wore a tank top underneath, one so tight that it clung to her like a second skin. He could see the sharp points of the nipples on her small breasts. “I’ve done it in some crazy places, but this beats all. This do it for you? Knowing that men have died down here, that death could come for you at any second. That what gets you off?”
“What do you want?” Spears asked.
He had to be careful how he played this.
“Same thing you do.” She opened her jacket all the way, then popped the top button on her pants so he could see the smooth taper of her abdomen and the silky rim of her panties. “And, you know, a seat at the table. A more prominent position within the organization.”
Predatory Instinct: A Thriller Page 21
